


Exit Strategy

by tatecorrigan



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, brief mention of violent death, implied suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-31
Updated: 2015-08-31
Packaged: 2018-04-18 09:33:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4701038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tatecorrigan/pseuds/tatecorrigan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"We're not going back," she said. Like she knew it for a fact. Like she had a plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exit Strategy

There is a whisper of pale linen in the Vault, floating across the stone floor, driven by bare feet. The subtle scrape of dust sounds like a far-off shot as a favorite Wife stumbles in the darkness. She pauses at a wall, breathing, making herself as flush as possible to the smooth curve with her round, protruding belly. Looks over her shoulder, tensed, expectant, for something, someone. She sees nothing but does not relax. Inches her way toward the entrance, where the massive steel door is closed, shut, locked...but not. Ajar, there is a slight crack, barely noticeable in the shadows.

The Wife pushes forward, muscles tensed. “Hello?” she whispers, a challenge as much as a greeting.

Her answer is the shadow of a sound, shifting imperceptibly in the dark. “Heard you coming,” chides the Imperator’s voice, all warm iron and creaking leather.

The Wife ignores the rebuke. “We’ve decided,” she announces, and then it has started for real.

For days now they have met like this. A conversation around the edge of a doorway, low, quiet, faces so close but hidden by stone. Puffs of breath carrying secret plans, a desperate strategy, a suicide mission if ever there was one.

"What if they catch us?”

“They might," The Imperator warns.

"I know. If they do..." The splendid Wife’s voice trails, imagining untold potentialities.

"He'll bring you back, he'll make sure he brings you back."

"What about you?"

The Imperator swallows hard, the sound of her throat closing against itself loud in the dire silence. "He'll kill me."

"If they catch us, you're dead." It’s not a question, rather a fact seeking affirmation.

"Seems that way."

The Wife pauses. "Do you think you can shoot me before they kill you?"

There is a small silence, adding to the bigness of the quiet in the corridor. The Imperator’s breath has stopped, just for a moment. The Wife pushes on. “I'm _not_ coming back. I won't."

Finally, an exhale, small, constrained. "I can't...I can't do what you're asking." Too many deaths on her hands already, she won't have another. 

"If you don't, I'll find a way." A threat of harm, of ugliness. Flashes in the Imperator’s mind, like lightning, of Wife-bodies strewn across the ground below the Citadel, floating face-down in the dank waters of the reservoir, hanging naked and swollen in the Vault, gauzy white linen wrapped thick around their necks. She blows deep sigh, anguished, resigned, against the stone of the wall. The Wife thinks she hears the soft scrape of a cheek pressing to the pebbled surface.

“Make it quick," the Wife insists. “It won’t hurt if you make it quick.”

“Alright,” submits the Imperator, softly, and the Wife thinks she hears a cracking in the Imperator’s voice. “And the others?” A morbid question, but the Imperator pushes for full details on this, her last mission.

“I can’t speak for them,” the Wife says, bitter. “I can’t make that choice for them.”

Silently the Imperator agrees, wonders if the others even know about this part of the plan, this secret assignment from the favorite Wife with the self-inflicted scars. She is tough, the Imperator thinks. In another life, a different set of circumstances, she could have been cruel. For all her beauty, this one is ruthless.

A soft, almost undetectable _plap_ , and the Imperator can dimly make out the shape of fingertips running the edge of the wall. She extends her arm—cold, metal—the tip of her claw touching to the delicate fingertips. The pale hand extends and grasps, tension on the springs in the Imperator’s salvaged digits. Squeezing. Not for the first time the Imperator feels a trepidation, an ominous rising in her belly reminding her _do not get attached do not feel do not_.

“Are you—are they—ready?”

“We’re ready,” says the Wife, voice hard. The Imperator suspects some of them may be more ready than others, wonders about how this one has convinced them all, wonders if any will break from fear. Knows if any will, it won’t be this one.

“Good.” Breathes deep, exhales slow. Shares the news. “Day after tomorrow. There’s a run to Gas Town, Bullet Farm. Tell Miss Giddy. _Be ready_.”

“We’re ready,” and this time it sounds like a petition, a prayer, a plea. Touches a soft place in the Imperator, so that without thinking she’s reaching out with her flesh hand to touch, to hold to this soft Wife-hand. Callouses are thick on her knuckles and palm but the Wife-hand does not pull back, just strokes gently, entwining fingers, gripping. “We’re ready,” the Wife breathes. “And we’re not coming back.”

The Imperator closes her eyes, swallows. “I won’t let you,” she promises. She prays it’s not a lie.

**Author's Note:**

> The way Angharad says "we're not going back," as though it were a fact, not a desire, made me wonder: did she have a plan in place to make sure that wouldn't happen? And given how strong, how defiant, Angharad proves herself to be, it sends a bit of a chill down my spine to think she might have.
> 
> I initially wrote the majority of this a few weeks ago but decided to finish and post it in honor of five wives week (fivewivesweek.tumblr.com).


End file.
